


you wore blue

by inmyriadbits



Category: Casablanca (1942)
Genre: Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 16:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmyriadbits/pseuds/inmyriadbits
Summary: "I remember that day; the Germans wore grey, you wore blue.""Yes, I've put that dress away now. I'll wear it again when the Germans march out of Paris."





	you wore blue

Ilsa came to America with only one suitcase. She unpacked it all their first night in New York. 

At the very bottom, wrapped carefully in tissue, was a blue dress. Ilsa didn't unwrap it when she moved it to the wardrobe, but she knew what was inside. 

Ilsa remembered pressing it one trapped afternoon, slowly going mad inside a stranger's house while the Gestapo stalked the town, like cats outside a mousehole. Leaving Rick had still been eating at her insides, sour guilt and regret. She pressed her memories of Paris away into the seams, laying them down flat and folding them inside the fragile cloth, then hiding it all behind delicate tissue that was too easily torn apart, then covered the blue dress with traveling clothes.

Since that day, Ilsa had never been in one place for long enough to see the bottom of her bag again.

Standing in her New York hotel, Ilsa pulled the now-creased dress from its wrappings. There was cheering in the street, but her hands shook as she laid it on the ironing board.

Ilsa wondered how many of her friends from the resistance had survived the German occupation, and she thought of how the streets of Paris might be filled with cheers as well. The streets of Paris were nothing like the streets in New York, were nothing like the streets of Casablanca, but they would be the same in this, she thought. 

She watched as a tear dropped onto the blue fabric, and smiled as she cried.


End file.
